


And The Other's Gold

by ErinPtah



Category: Puella Magi Madoka☆Magica
Genre: F/F, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-06
Updated: 2011-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:39:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/pseuds/ErinPtah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homura met Mami only a short while after she met Madoka. So why are their relationships so different?</p>
            </blockquote>





	And The Other's Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



The concert-hall barrier explodes in a fireball of ruby light, and in its rippling wake Mami turns to Homura with the glazed, deadened look that's become all too familiar. Her silver-filigree rifle turns on Homura's soul gem.

This time, finally, Homura's ready. Time snaps to a halt so she can yank the golden gem from the feather in Mami's cap, then turn and run down the bridge as fast as she's able. It'll be the longest she's ever put the world on pause, the shield on her arm growing heavier with every step, but she can't have Mami moving again until the boots and buckles and guns have melted away. Can't have a lost soul magically shooting up the city. Time enough for that in a couple of weeks (oh, who's she kidding — _two weeks, four days, nine hours, twenty-six minutes_ , and she could work it out to the nanosecond if she tried).

Her narrow heels strike the slats of the train tracks with the balance of a ninja. When her lungs start to burn with the lack of oxygen, the gem on her hand glitters to remind them that they don't really need it. They haven't for a long time.

Seventy feet — seventy-five — eighty — the shield is a leaden weight — eighty-five — she's stumbling now — ninety — the color floods back into the scenery, but it's enough, she's almost there. Ninety-five, a hundred (more or less — she doesn't have the same sort of precision with distance), and she can imagine the billow of golden ribbons behind her a moment before she hears the faint thump of a body hitting gravel.

Homura stumbles back down the tracks. Mami's soul fits warm and egg-shaped in her cupped palm.

She stops a few paces away to tap Oktavia's grief seed against the clouded surface. Mami was always fastidious, but best not to wake her without a full stock of hope backing her up. There's gravel tangled in Mami's curls and pressed against her cheek where she landed; it digs into Homura's violet stockings as she sinks to her knees and brushes the soul gem across Mami's fingertips.

"You can't die," she says firmly. It's the next thing the other girl hears.

Mami clutches with feeble hands at her collar, seeking the ribbon she uses as weapon and shield. All she gets is the puffed bow of her school uniform. "A-Akemi-san...? Was I dreaming?"

"No. I'm sorry. It's real, and you need to be strong enough to face it."

"You knew."

Homura bows her head.

"You knew!" Grains and pebbles rain down as she sits up, voice gaining strength. "All this time, you've gone on — knowing that every fight brings our wishes closer to becoming curses — and you kept it secret!"

"And why do you think that was?" demands Homura. "I didn't want you trying to kill me!"

"If you had any honor you'd kill yourself!"

The slap is hard enough to send the tears flying off her cheeks.

"Now you listen to me," hisses Homura, palm stinging. "When your soul gem is one shot away from going totally black, I'll shoot you myself rather than let you turn. Die a minute earlier, and you'll be throwing away your only chance at redemption."

Mami's shoulders heave with a furious sob. "Don't you see? It's already too late!"

"For us, and for Miki-san, yes! Not for Kaname-san!"

She's terrified the message won't get through; she loses track (for the first time in _one year three weeks eight days twenty hours fourteen minutes two seconds_ ) of how long it takes.

Then at last the spark re-settles in Mami's eyes, and she crumples into Homura's arms.

"It's okay," murmurs Homura, shaken to her bones at the near miss. "We'll stop Walpurgisnacht. We'll save her. Together."

 

***

 

Three timelines later, Homura arrives at the battle just in time to hear the violins let out their final screeching cry, to see familiar lace puffs and ribbons and delicate white gloves, and to watch Mami's dead gaze aim without seeing at Madoka's throat.

She pulls out a Glock, fires at Mami's hat without thinking twice, and jumps down from the trestle to sob across Madoka's corpse.

An hour later ( _and three minutes and forty-four seconds_ ) Kyoko finds them, all three bodies unmoved from where they fell, and demands to know whether Homura took out the witch who killed them, and who's going to tell Sayaka.

 

***

 

Mami's used to Kyoko barging in at all hours, so she opens the door at half past two with a plate of chocolate biscuits in hand.

Homura stares at them like she isn't sure what they're for.

It looks like an emergency, so Mami invites her straight in, and tries not to feel self-conscious about wearing nothing more appropriate than ribbon-trimmed yellow pajamas. This is the first friend Homura's seen disappear, isn't it? She remembers coaching Kyoko through the same thing a year ago. You get used to it, but it never gets any easier.

They sit awkwardly at angles across her low glass table, and she's trying to summon up the right well-worn platitudes when Homura says, "The first time you rescued me, there was someone else with you."

"Kyuubey?" asks Mami, recalling the scene. Homura had been frail, just out of the hospital, with glasses and braids and tears: an easy target for a circle of demons, until Mami took them out in a single sweep of bullets.

"No, I mean, the very first time. It was in a timeline you don't remember. Her name was Kaname Madoka."

When she says the name, her grip tightens on the twin red ribbons clutched in her hands.

The tale Homura spins is fantastic to say the least. She's almost apologetic as she talks about Mami trying to kill each of her closest friends in one timeline or another, though Mami has a sinking feeling that it wouldn't be impossible, even now. If from Sayaka's vanishing body had blossomed a squadron of demons....

People look at Mami and think she's calm and imposing, but it's all on the surface. Madoka, from the way Homura describes her, was an insecure and flaily surface wrapped around a core of solid steel.

"At some point, I stopped trying to save you," says Homura, eyes on her reflection in the now-cold cup of tea before her. "That is, I tried when I could, just like I tried to keep Sayaka safe: not for your own sakes, but to keep Madoka from being sad. I couldn't save everyone, and she was the one who made me stronger, puella magi or not. And you...I talked you out of killing yourself three timelines in a row, burning through a piece of myself each time...and then you killed her, and I didn't have the strength any more."

A tear splashes into the surface of the tea. Silently, Mami hands her a folded tissue.

"I know you're not any of those other yous," sniffs Homura. "But it's the same me. It's so easy for most peope to say _I'd never hurt you_ , they won't have to find out anyway, but I already know...."

Mami cuts her off. "Homura-san. All of them would forgive you. I know, because I do."

 

***

 

They climb under the covers together. It's chaste, for warmth and comfort only, though Mami smiles to herself to think of the teasing she'll have to endure if Kyoko shows up now.

"You loved her, didn't you?" whispers Mami in the dark.

Homura's head nods on the pillow beside her.

It had been obvious even before the struggle to get her to leave those red ribbons on Mami's bureau. Come morning, Mami will have to show her how to wear those properly. (She's always had a way with ribbons.) "So you wished to save her."

"It was only a crush when I made the wish," admits Homura. "And it was my first apocalypse, so I wasn't thinking straight...but by the end, yes. I loved her. I _love_ her, because she's still out there, even now."

"But in this timeline," says Mami. "In the one she made real without herself, you made a wish without knowing her yet. Can I ask...?"

Homura laughs. It's sleepy and happy and carefree, like coming up from the bottom of a well and seeing the sunshine for the first time. "They said I'd probably need another surgery, did you know? And they said I might not survive, even then. So when Kyuubey made the offer, I...I wished to have a future."


End file.
